Tagged: Pastoral Ministry

How empty life would feel if we could not remember! The happy lick of a puppy’s tongue. That week we spent in bed with chicken pox at age seven. The tottering gait of our child’s first step. The splendor of a path cut through a yellow, orange, green, brown forest. The agony of sacrifice that…

Of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1 Plagued by hallucinations, Vincent Van Gogh once sought refuge in an asylum. Fears of a tortured existence out in the world drove him into the asylum in Saint-Rèmy. There, for a time, he discovered some measure of peace. Fears can be debilitating. They can distort our perception…

I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint. Jeremiah 31:25 By some estimates, seven of every ten doctor visits are fatigue-related. That’s a lot of weariness! Sometimes fatigue is a symptom of disease. But fatigue has other sources, too. Long-term stress. Grief. Ongoing frustration. Clinical depression. The list of causes goes on and on….

The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Psalm 27:1 When you enter someone’s home, you don’t expect to be taken down to the basement or into the garage. But when Cory invites his friends over, he takes them down into the basement. Like many guys, Cory has fixed up his basement. First, he framed…

Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Genesis 11:4 How do you define sin? The classic answer wraps itself around concepts like “missing the mark,” “disobedience,” and “trespassing.” Genesis 11 tells about the people who built the Tower…

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love; for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. (Psalm 143:8) Try as we might, we can’t ignore Valentine’s Day. From the mall to the restaurant to the florist to the…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). By their nature, crosses are simple shapes, neither complex nor intricate. Yet the cross of Jesus is deeply mysterious. In that cross, all kinds of opposites come…

Every summer, from age 5 to 14, I attended a week of Vacation Bible School (VBS) at my church. Each morning, my friend’s mom would load us up in her van and carry us off for a day filled with Bible stories, games, singing, and crafts, all focused on a kid-friendly theme. At the end…

“We’re not saved by works, but we’re saved for works,” says my pastor, Karl Schmidt. He’s summarizing St. Paul’s words, “For it is by grace you are saved, though faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created…

Falling a Little Short All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23 Anyone who sets goals knows what it means to fall short. It is one thing to fall short of a production quota at work or to have our 401k’s growth fall short of what we expected for retirement….